


Blue

by Todesengel



Series: Adam Lived [1]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, dark!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:24:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the strange men come, Mama tells him to hide in the root cellar.</p><p>Trigger warnings for children in danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the "Adam Lived" sandbox. For the Mag7 bingo prompt: dark!fic

It's Blue's barking that makes him get up. 

He's supposed to be asleep, but he's not. It's really late, but Mama is still up, and he knows that if he makes a noise Mama's gonna come into the room and give him a scolding. So he lies in his bed as quiet as he can be, even though he's too excited to sleep – Daddy and Uncle Buck are supposed to be back tomorrow, and Uncle Buck promised to bring him something nice and Daddy always brings him a tiny piece of chocolate when he comes back from Mexico and it's like Christmas only better. And he can't wait to tell Daddy 'bout the pretty lady he and Mama met in town, the one who said she knew Daddy and gave him a whole nickel all of his own! Mama hadn't liked her, but Adam thought she was real nice and Mama had let him keep the nickel anyway. He ain't sure what he's gonna spend it on yet – maybe Daddy will have an idea. That thought makes him wiggle a little and clutch his nickel tighter; he likes it when Daddy takes him into town, likes going to the big general store and smelling all the spices and looking at all the things on the shelves. He ain't ever bought anything at the store before, and he ain't sure if he wants a knife like Daddy's or maybe a piece of candy or maybe a harmonica. 

Still, Blue is barking, and that ain't right. Blue barks a lot, and even though he's Adam's dog – Uncle Buck said so – Mama and Daddy won't let him sleep in the house; besides Blue likes runnin' about in the pastures and hunting rabbits and gophers and he barks up a storm when he's hunting. But he don't bark like that on the hunt – he don't bark deep and mean and growly. He only does that when there're strangers on the farm and it's real late for visitin'. 

Blue sounds real mad about somethin'. Real tough. And it frightens Adam.

So Adam gets up because his dog is barking and he's afraid. 

When the gun goes off and Blue stops barking, Adam's even more afraid. 

He tiptoes to the door separating the two rooms of their house and peers around the corner at his Mama, who's put down her reading and picked up the rifle Daddy left. Adam ain't allowed to touch the rifle – he'll get a real good hidin' if he does – and he ain't ever seen Mama use it before, 'cept to scare off the coyotes. 

Mama loads it up with the buckshot rounds and Adam's suddenly terrified. 

"Mama?" Adam sidles into the other room, still holding onto the frame of the door. He ain't sure what he wants to do – whether he wants to run to his mama or hide under the covers. "Mama, what's goin' on?"

"Come here, Adam," Mama says, and Adam does exactly what she tells him to do because she's his Mama. He clings to her side and looks up at her, trusting her completely. She strokes his hair, and then touches her belly; she's been doin' that a lot lately and Mama and Daddy told him that he's gonna have a little brother or sister soon, but they told him that before and ain't happened yet. He thinks he'd like a baby brother – 'cept they'd have to get the new baby his own dog 'cause Adam ain't sharin' Blue. 

"Mama?" he says again, and she smiles at him. Her smile's distracted and she touches his hair again absently, smoothing down his cowlick. 

"I need you to go hide in the root cellar, Adam," she tells him. "It's a game, okay? You hide in there real good – make sure nobody can see you – and be real, real quiet until I tell you it's time to come out." 

"What's goin' on," he asks again. "Where's Blue."

"Just go hide, baby," she says, and Adam nods solemnly. Mama helps him pull up the hatch to the cellar. It's a big, heavy hatch and it's real dark down there and Adam doesn't particularly want to go, 'cause even though he's five and a big boy he really doesn't like the dark of the cellar. It ain't the same as regular dark, even with the way the firelight seeps in through the cracks in the floor, and besides, Daddy told him to take care of Mama. He ain't sure he can do that from the cellar. 

He looks back at his Mama, but she's staring out the window and chewing on her bottom lip, like she does sometimes when Daddy's busting horses. She glances back at him, and he can tell she's real worried about somethin', though she smiles at him like he's the bravest boy in the world. So he goes down into the cellar, one careful step at a time, and when he's all the way at the bottom, Mama closes the hatch on him and seals him in. 

It's real dark in the cellar, and pretty cold, and Adam don't like how it smells. Daddy keeps the small beer and a bunch of his gear down here, and Mama keeps most of her preserves on the shelves Daddy built, and Adam knows his way around the place even in the dark, but he still don't like it. It's not like the rest of his house, which is real nice and civilized and has two whole rooms and a stone fireplace and an oak floor that he helped Mama wash today; they scrubbed it down real good, and he'd carried five whole buckets up from the pump and got to pour them out all over the floor before Mama swept all the soap and water out the front door. The cellar has a dirt floor, only it ain't the same as the dirt outside; it's cold dirt, and hard, and when Adam wiggles his toes into it, it doesn't make that growing-things smell the outside dirt does. It just smells musty and it makes Adam sneeze.

Still, Mama told him to go hide, and to be real quiet, so he creeps his way to the tiny little hiding place behind the cask of small beer where nobody's ever been able to find him, and he crouches down as low as he can, and he tries very hard not to cry. He's real scared, and he don't like being scared. He don't like being down here at all – he wants to go back upstairs and be with his Mama and he wants Daddy to be home and he wants to hear Blue yowling at the moon. But he ain't gonna get that right now, so instead he clutches tight to his nickel and thinks about all the things he could buy with it. 

It seems like he's been down here forever before he hears the footsteps walking up the stairs to the porch. They're jangling footsteps, and he thinks maybe it's Daddy and Uncle Buck back early from Mexico, but there are too many of them and besides, Blue knows Daddy. 

He closes his eyes so tight he sees stars. 

"Get away from my house," he hears Mama say. "I don't know what you want, but you ain't got no business here." 

"Now that ain't very hospitable of you, Mrs. Larabee," one of the strangers says, and Adam shivers because he's afraid of that voice. "Ain't you gonna invite us into your lovely home?" 

"She sent you, didn't she? Well, you take one more step and I'll kill you," Mama says, and then she cries out in pain and there's people laughing and Adam bites his lip hard enough that he tastes blood. 

"Yes she did, ma'am," the stranger says, and his voice is real smooth, real even. "Ain't nothin' personal." 

"You go to hell," Mama says, and then she cries out again. 

Adam wraps his arms around his knees and buries his head into the little space between his knees and his chest and rocks back and forth. He wants his Daddy. He wants his Uncle Buck. He wants to not be afraid. 

"Damn, she's a pretty one," someone else says, and Adam shudders. He don't want to hear this. "Reckon we could have a little bit of fun—"

Whatever the second man is about to say is cut off by the sound of a slap, and Adam wonders if that was his Mama or the first man doing the hitting. 

"Sorry 'bout that, ma'am," the first man says. "I'm afraid these boys are just a bunch of drunken scum who don't know how to treat a lady."

Mama makes a noise and the stranger laughs. "Now, now. No need for that." 

"We ain't got much money," Mama says, "but you can have all of it. It's in a box under the bed. And I got some jewelry my Ma gave me – it's real gold and silver. You can take anything you want, just go away. Please, just go away."

"Can't do that, ma'am. I've been hired to do a job, and I always see my job through." There's a sound Adam recognizes as a match being struck, and then the man says, "I got a reputation to maintain. Besides, what makes you think we ain't gonna just help ourselves after we're done here?"

"We'll move away," Mama says, and she's pleading now. "We'll go far away, and you can tell that woman that you killed us, and nobody'll ever know." 

"Oh they'll know. That man of your tends to stick out something fierce." Adam smells smoke now. Cigar smoke, like Daddy's, but different. He wrinkles his nose. Only Daddy's allowed to smoke cigars in the house.

"Please. I'll do anything you want."

"Oh I reckon you'll do what we want anyway," the man says. Adam hears footsteps again – people moving around his house, people going into the other room, the sound of furniture being shifted, the creaking slam of the doors of the big old cupboard banging. They're looking for something and Adam knows that the thing they're looking for is him. 

"Where's your boy," the man asks, and his voice is still real calm. 

"He ain't here," Mama says. "He's gone to stay with friends." 

The man makes a _tsk_ -ing noise. "Now Mrs. Larabee, why'd you have to go and lie like that? I've been watching your place all day – ain't seen nobody come or go."

"He ain't here," Mama says again, only she sounds desperate now. "He ain't here!"

"You got a root cellar, Mrs. Larabee?" the man asks, and Mama screams and Adam suddenly can't tell what's going on anymore, because that's when everybody starts shouting – Mama's shouting and the men are shouting and Adam ain't shouting 'cause he promised he'd be real quiet, but he has to stuff the collar of his nightshirt into his mouth to keep from making a noise. 

And then, suddenly, someone fires a gun. 

For a brilliant, dizzying moment, Adam thinks that it's Daddy come home, that Daddy's saved them. 

"Shit," someone swears, and it ain't Daddy or Uncle Buck. 

"Go find the kid," the man says, and there are more footsteps now, and the hatch to the cellar is being lifted. 

Adam makes himself as small as he can be. 

"No!" Mama shouts, only she don't sound like herself at all. She sounds real hurt. "You ain't taking my baby!" 

In the small sliver of room that Adam can see from the partially opened hatch, he sees his Mama throw the lamp at a strange man. The glass shatters at his feet, and then there's fire blooming across the floor. 

"Crazy bitch!" someone shouts, and the hatch door drops closed with a thud, plunging Adam back into the darkness. 

"Put it out!" someone else says, and then, "Hey! Crazy bitch!"

Something else shatters, and now Adam can hear the fire crackling above him and smell the smoke. The footsteps above him move haphazardly, back and forth, and someone says, "Come on, let's get out of here!"

"Find me the kid," the man with the smooth voice says. 

"You want him, you get him yourself," someone says. "You ain't payin' me enough to burn to death." 

The man with the smooth voice growls, and for a moment Adam thinks he's going to come down into the cellar. But then all the footsteps start to leave, and Adam knows that he's safe from the scary man. 

He gets up from his hiding place and creeps towards the stairs. He wants to go up into the house, but Mama told him to stay in the cellar until she came for him. He doesn't want to disappoint Mama. But Mama might be hurt, and he's supposed to take care of her. Daddy said he was supposed to take care of her. 

He fidgets at the foot of the stairs, then climbs up them. Mama might be hurt, and he's supposed to take care of her, and that means he can't stay down here in the cellar. 

The hatch won't budge when he pushes at it, no matter how hard he tries. 

"Mama!" he shouts. "Mama, let me out!"

Mama doesn't reply. 

Adam pushes at the hatch again, pushes so hard he pushes all the breath out of his body with his trying, but there's something on it, something real heavy. And it's getting hot up here at the top of the stairs. Real, real hot, and he can hear the fire on the other side of the hatch. And there's a lot of smoke too. He coughs and it hurts his throat to breathe in up here, and he can't get the hatch to move, so he goes back down the stairs, back down to his hiding place. 

Mama said to stay quiet and stay put until she came for him, and he's gonna do that. He's gonna stay real quiet and still. 

He coughs again, and tries to muffle the cough. If he's not quiet, maybe Mama won't come for him. But there's a lot of smoke in the cellar, now, and he can't stop coughing. The air's real bad and his head is starting to hurt. It's not cool in the cellar anymore, except right down at the bottom, right against the musty dirt floor. 

Adam lies down and the air ain't as bad here. He can even kind of smell the honeysuckle that grows up the side of their house, and he crawls towards that smell until he finds a little hole in the side of the wall that brings in some fresh air. He breathes in deep, and coughs again and again and again. 

His chest really hurts now and so does his throat and he really wants something to drink. He's very dizzy now too, and he wants his Mama. He wants his Mama to hold him and give him something nice to drink and to tell him everything's going to be all right. 

Maybe he'll buy Mama something really pretty with his nickel. 

Adam coughs again, a wheezy cough. It's too warm now, even on the floor, and the noise of the fire is getting louder. The cellar isn't real dark anymore, but Adam's not comforted by that fact. The light in the cellar isn't the right type of light. 

He closes his eyes and scrunches up real tight and waits for someone to come.


End file.
